"A lot of my co-workers had second and third jobs. If I had to raise a family I couldn't do it on those wages."

Ray Gholston works hard to earn his paychecks.

He’s a full-time clerk at a retail store on the west side of Ann Arbor, where he helps keep the store organized and checks customers out at the register all while making $7.40 per hour.

He’s also homeless and has been since November, spending his nights – and some off days – at the Delonis Center in downtown Ann Arbor. Gholston said that his low-wage job doesn’t afford him the ability to pay rent anywhere in Ann Arbor or close to his job.

“Minimum wage is not enough. There’s a housing crisis right now. You basically have to have a roommate to live in the city if you don’t have a spouse or some kind of financial partner,” he said.

President Obama speaks to an audience of University of Michigan students at the Intramural Building during a visit to Ann Arbor on Wednesday, April 2, 2014.
Courtney Sacco | The Ann Arbor News

“Increasing the minimum wage would go a long way. What companies are paying people now just isn’t enough to get by.”

Locally, Raise Michigan is the leading advocacy group for the increase in wages among the state’s low-wage workers.

“…(R)ight now there is a bill before Congress that would boost America’s minimum wage to $10.10 an hour…Passing this bill would not just raise wages for minimum-wage workers; it would help lift wages for nearly 28 million Americans, including nearly a million people right here in Michigan,” Obama said during his speech.

“It would lift millions of people out of poverty right away. It would help millions more work their way out of poverty right away.”

Roughly one million workers in Michigan earn less than the proposed $10.10 minimum wage, and about 96,000 of them make $7.40 per hour – the state’s minimum wage for workers who don’t rely on tips – or less.

University of Michigan economist Don Grimes said only a very small percentage of the state’s minimum wage workers are in Washtenaw County. The mixed industries – especially all of the government jobs – and the number of people with college degrees, he said, makes this region more likely to offer higher wage employment opportunities.

Despite the fact that there aren’t many low-wage earners in Washtenaw County, there are a number of local proponents who feel like increasing the minimum would provide an economic boost and be good for businesses, consumers and the workers.

Ann Arbor-area resident Latoya Kelly, 28, recently left a job where she was making less than $2.40 per hour, 35 hours a week, as a waitress at a family-owned restaurant. Now Kelly full time works as an assistant at a nonprofit.

She said she found it hard to be able to live independently and she and her then-boyfriend had to move in together in order to afford paying rent and bills.

“It was hard when we made under $2.40 an hour, and because we weren’t a larger business we couldn’t really rely on a steady stream of customers. On a good week I could make about $300 in tips; on a bad week, maybe $100,” said Kelly, who is single with no children to support.

“A lot of my co-workers had second and third jobs. If I had to raise a family I couldn’t do it on those wages,” Kelly said.

While she believes that an increased minimum wage is necessary in order for people to be able to afford basic needs such as housing and food, Kelly said that raising the pay could negatively impact the business owners.

“I think it’s a great idea to pay people more, but I could also see business owners who might just close up shop if they have to pay higher wages, or they’ll try to do more with less people.

“A restaurant like where I worked, they had about 15 workers and I know they couldn’t have afforded to pay people $10.10 an hour. The owner would’ve just closed because it wouldn’t have been worth it.”

The Michigan Restaurant Association agrees with Kelly. The organization has come out against the proposed increase, saying that it will cause a ripple effect that will aversely impact Michigan’s economy.

“While it may be well-intentioned, it is the wrong plan at the wrong time for Michigan’s still-fragile economy,” MRA president and CEO Brian DeBano said in a statement.

“Make no mistake that the radical Raise Michigan proposal to increase the minimum wage and completely eliminate the tipped minimum wage will not only increase menu prices and cost Michigan jobs, it will put many restaurants out of business.”

Obama’s Michigan visit came just a week before the Senate is expected to vote on a bill to raise the national minimum wage to $10.10.

Michigan will have a ballot proposal for an increased minimum wage on the November ballot, which would call for an increase from $7.40 per hour to $10.10, in line with Obama’s campaigning.

Michigan gubernatorial candidate Mark Schauer said the president nailed his speech and that minimum wage earners deserve a raise.

“It’s long overdue. In Michigan, the minimum wage…hasn’t been raised in a number of years. We are better than having parents working full time, earning minimum wage and raising their children in poverty. It’s good for the economy because those low-wage earners put that increase directly into the economy and local businesses that hire Michigan workers,” Schauer told The Ann Arbor News.

“There is a very extreme Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives so I think it’s a tough lift and I think the president was right to call them out. My experience in the state legislature when I was there with divided power is that it’s up to the people to send a strong message and I’m very confident that we can do it here in Michigan.”

As far as Gholston is concerned, he said he’s sure a change will come in the form of increased minimum wage.

He said he disagrees when people say that mandating a minimum pay isn’t for the law to decide, but individual business owners should make that call independently when it comes to what their workers deserve.

“It reminds me of a Chris Rock joke when I hear about employers who pay minimum wage,” Gholston said.

“Chris Rock said ‘You know what that means when someone pays you minimum wage? Your boss is trying to say that if they could pay you less, they would, but it’s against the law.’ That’s the truth.”

The push to raise the minimum wage is also being backed locally by Zingerman’s and its co-owner Paul Saginaw, as well as elected officials such as State Representatives Adam Zemke and Jeff Irwin, both democrats from Ann Arbor.

Saginaw traveled to Washington D.C. in January to meet with business owners from Colorado, New York, Maryland and Washington, D.C. as they talked with U.S. Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez about the benefits of raising the minimum wage.